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Amnis Corp., a Seattle-based scientific device company, has raised $8.75 million in new capital to help get its first instrument on the market.
The company is developing a highspeed cell analyzer that can identify cells in a blood sample at a rate of 1,000 cells per second. Later versions of the device could be used to diagnose disease or develop potential drugs, executives say.
Amnis plans to use the money to market its first version of the device, which will be sold to research labs and pharmaceutical companies. The company will also ramp up its research and development on advanced versions that may be able to analyze 10,000 to 100,000 cells per second.
"With this money, we will at least get to the point where we can have a product on the market," said Harold Kawaguchi, the company's acting president and chief executive. "In order to get to the drug discovery marketplace, we need to significantly increase the throughput of the number of cells that we're looking at."
Amnis aims to be generating revenues by the fourth quarter of next year, he said.
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